


Letting Lalnable Loose

by EverytimeIDoSomethingStupid (kingkongkitty)



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: F/M, Saving Kim, Taint - Freeform, flux - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-02-18 02:41:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2332301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingkongkitty/pseuds/EverytimeIDoSomethingStupid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Duncan and Kim go to retake their lab, but meet a rather unexpected character.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lalnable Who?

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt fic! Thanks to whoever emailed me (you didn't leave a name) with the prompt "Duncan and Kim go to retake their lab, but meet Lalnable" I hope you enjoy xx

I shifted the pink backpack on my shoulder, chasing after Nano. She pushed through the striped door we’d avoided so far. I ran in after her, almost tripping over her when she stopped. I looked around in shock. 

Today had already been surreal enough. Now I was in a room that shouldn’t exist, surrounded by people trapped in tiny cells. I stood, rooted in shock. I couldn’t believe what had happened to my home in a few short months. “Lalna!”

“Yeah.” Nano stood at the other end of the room, dwarfed by the massive cryotubes and engines surrounding her.

“What have you been up to down here?” What did she mean? She knew I didn’t know about all this. 

“Nothing! I didn’t even know this was down here.” I smiled reassuringly at her, confused when she backed away, a large, tattered book in her hands.

"I don’t believe you, and I don’t trust you."

"… What?"

“This book here. You’ve signed it off! This was all you!” She dropped the book. You could barely hear it drop over the sound of the machines humming.

“Wait a sec...” I flew across the room, picking the book from the floor, pretending to ignore the fact that Nano was now pressed up against the ceiling, as far away from me as she possibly could be, frantically rooting her way through her bag. I quickly scanned over the page, reading unfamiliar words in a familiar hand. “What the hell! I haven’t done this! How could you think I’d done this!!”

“You told me what happened with Rythian! You stuck nukes under his base! How do I know you wouldn’t do this?!” Her eyes were large, accusing and - something I’d never seen before in Nano - scared. Her hands were trembling as she pulled a gun out of her bag. Not pointing it at me, but the threat was there all the same.

“Shit, Nano! Put the gun down!!!" I dropped my bag to the floor. "I'm unarmed. Don't do anything you regret." My heart and mind raced and I let words gush out of my mouth, filling space in a desperate attempt to convince her I was innocent. "I never set it off! They were just there so he didn’t attack me and Sjin.” I noticed the name scrawled at the bottom of the page. This was about to get complicated. “Nano, I swear I know nothing about this.”

“But your name’s on the book.”

“No, it’s not. Lalnable Hector’s name is written on the book.“

“Yeah, that’s your name! Lalna!”

“No, it’s different. Lalna, not Lalnable.” The name rung a bell. “Anyway, it’s dated four years from now. 2018! This wasn’t me.”

“But how is this possible?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a trick? Just put the gun down!”

“Or maybe you figure out how to travel back in time?”

“But does that mean I go crazy in four years?” And if so, does that mean you aren’t there to stop me going crazy?

The pause was silent, with both myself and Nano musing over the words, and the implications. Eventually something softened in her eyes again. “Well, I wouldn’t say you could be counted as sane now.” Nano smiled hesitantly, slipping the gun away. I grinned at her across the room, relieved she still felt comfortable enough to joke around me. I watched as she slowly lowered herself to the floor, standing a few feet away from me before shamefacedly handing me her rucksack, filled with everything she needed to defend herself from me with. This was a massive show of trust, and I could see how much it cost her to do. “Ok, I trust you. Just keep your distance a little, yeah?”

“That’s fine.”

I heard a creak behind me and turned just in time to see myself walk in through the door. I watched as a lab coated, wild haired man ran across the room and picked Kim up, swinging her around in the air, embracing her. “It’s been so long, my dear.” He placed her down carefully, grinning like his face might split even as a single tear trickled down his face. 

Nano punched him square in the face. “Who the hell are you?”


	2. Chapter 2

I stared at myself, out cold on the floor. “Remind me never to get on your bad side, Nano.” She smiled at me, slightly embarrassed.

“I’m sorry. I should have believed you Lal. I wasn’t thinking straight.” She tugged at her hair indecisively. “Coming back to this castle just makes me feel… itchy and… confused.” She pulled me into a hug, her shoulders shaking as tears filled her eyes. “I’m so sorry about the gun, I never meant it.”

“Hey, hey. It’s ok.” I wrapped my arms around her tightly, holding her so close I could feel every shudder through her body. “You’re tired and stressed out, just like me and you need a break. After this I’ll take you on a holiday. Deal?” I got a small sniffle and a nod into my chest.

Once Nano had calmed down I let go of her. My doppelganger was stirring. “I'll tie him up.” I gestured at the prone body on the floor, “then we’ll both get some sleep. Sound good?”

“Sounds great’” She gave me a small, radiant smile and headed towards the crafting bench.

I tied up the blond as Nano crafted some beds. After munching her way through a stack of noodles she slipped into her bed and fell asleep quickly, something I was glad for. I moved Lalnable through to the next room, shaking him roughly to wake him up.To my dismay, he seemed comfortable with the situation he was in. “Hey Lalna. How’s it going?”

How are you meant to reply to that? “Good thanks. And you?”

“Not too bad. How’s Nano?” He had my carefree smile plastered across his face, but I couldn’t tell if his bravado was fake.

“How do you know who Nano is?”

“I lost her four years ago to the flux.” His smile had changed to the smile I used to have when everything and everything was a tool to be used and abandoned, when nothing had a meaning to me. “How long has yours got?”I didn’t notice the tears trembling on his upper lash line or the sadness in his eyes or even the concerned tone of his voice. I thought he was being cruel, like I was to Rythian.

I saw red. "I don’t like you. I don’t know who you are, but you disgust me.” Before I knew it I had Nano’s gun in my hand. “I swear to God, if I didn’t need you, I’d have put a bullet through your head already.” Lalnable looked confused, trying to speak. I cut straight across him. “But you know more than me. Four years of research I haven’t done yet and four years of technology that’s more advanced than what I have.” I pressed the gun to his temple, allowing the cold metal to tickle his skin. “Tell me everything you know about the Flux, and most importantly, how to cure it."

Lalnable’s eyes were wide with shock and fear, yet he still managed to choke out his answer. “Not four years of research. Hundreds”

“What? How?” My jaw dropped. This was more than I could’ve hoped for. My anger evaporated, replaced with a deep sense of relief. I was suddenly full of hope, and to my surprise I felt my eyes fill with tears. 

“Hey, hey. It’s ok. I know how you feel.”

“How could you?”

“Because I was in the same place as you four years ago. I know how you feel, staying up all night trying to find a cure, watching the flux spread up her arms, noticing how she gets worse daily.”

“How is this knowledge possible though?”

“The laws of minecraftia. The naga, nukes and flux you set off on ‘holiday’ sent the world into catastrophe. Everyone was ejected from the dimension, time was broken. It sped up in here. It’s how owl island and your castle were taken over. You really think only 10 months had passed? We're stuck in a cycle at the minute. Endless copies of us and Nano, repeatedly meeting in 2018, until we fix it. Every copy of us had continued with the research alone, trying to save Nano. I remember doing this myself. It’s gonna keep happening until someone does it right.”

This sounded ridiculous, yet oddly plausible. “How do you know this?”

“I have my sources.” Lalnable would not elaborate, only hinted about some storm mage with antlers.

“What did you do?”

“I killed me. So I would start by not doing that.” I untied his wrists quickly and let him stand.

“This had better not be a stupid idea, but I’m going to trust you.” I watched as he rubbed his wrists. “So what do we need to do?”

“We need to get nano into a cryotube as soon as we can, try to limit the spread of the flux.” He tugged a torch on the wall and a large alcove appeared. Inside was a small cryotube, softly glowing blue. The walls were painted beautifully with scenes of deer and rabbits, trees of transformation and rainbow oaks, and a whole wall devoted to penguins and arora blocks. 

“Wow. This is just… wow.” To my surprise Lalnable blushed, embarrassed.

“I had a lot of spare time between experiments. I figured that eventually someone would see sense so I prepared this place for her.” He grinned at me. “Now we just need to figure out how to get her into here.”

\---

The next morning when Nano awoke I greeted her with a smile and a plate of mooncakes. She came over to me quietly, her long hair tickling my arms as she hugged me. I kissed her gently on the top of the head, letting my hand cup her chin. “I’m so sorry.”

“Wha-”I quickly applied pressure and Nano fainted. I caught her carefully. “Hector!” He ran through the door. 

“I got her Lalna.” He grabbed her legs and we quickly carried her through into the cryotube. It was sealed quickly, the frost spreading over her face and extracting all colour from her in minutes. After quickly checking her vitals I allowed myself to be lead into a room full of books, all signed of by other versions of myself. I picked up one of the older volumes, reading quickly but carefully while Hector began experimenting more with the fluxed animals that we’d captured early this morning. 

Now it was just a race against time.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! It's been far too long. I'm sorry about how long it's taking me to actually finish things. I'm going to try to finish this within February.

And so I read.

I read words until they blurred together, until even the neatest writing was beyond recognition, refusing to sleep until I knew it all. 

I read until my eyes were red with lack of sleep and I collapsed at my desk in exhaustion. 

I read when I woke up again and continued where I left off, my place marked by a little trail of drool. 

I read as Lalnable too worked nonstop, the occasional flash of purple or a brief tingle of magic zipping through the room as my pile of books slowly diminished. 

I read until my head was bursting with equations and variants and metalloids. 

I read until I’d finished the whole library and the candles had all burnt down to stubs, plunging my corner of the lab into darkness.

\---

I woke in the corner of the lab, lying on a hastily crafted bed. The uneven edges of the slats beneath me dug into my ribs a little through the thin mattress. I rolled over onto my back, staring idly at the ceiling as I mentally ran through some of the information I'd garnered from the weeks of reading I’d done. As my thoughts ran amok with thoughts of antacids and neutrinos my eyes followed a small wisp of purple gas as it floated across the ceiling. 

The idle thought of ‘I should probably worry about that’ ran through my mind, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to care about the chance of getting infected. So what if I got fluxed too? If we failed at curing Nano, there’s not really anything left to live for anyway. I couldn’t stand the thought of allowing myself to fall once again into the precipice of madness, not after avoiding it for so long.

I propped myself up on my elbows, absently pushing my fringe out of my face when it flopped forwards. I sat up, wriggling my shoulders and sighing in relief as my back cracked and relaxed. I was reaching for my goggles when a labcoat hit me full in the face.

“Oi, you maniac!” I smiled across at Hector as he approached, pulling the labcoat on as I rose to my feet.

“Morning Lal!” He met my grin easily. “Don't put that on just yet.” He swiped the labcoat off me again.

I looked at him quizzically. “Why not?”

“It’s been a while. Maybe you should clean up and go and see Nano?”

I gulped, a lump forming in my throat. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for this. I didnt want to see Nano dwarfed even in the tiny tube, lying as cold as death. Hector smiled at me compassionately, his red eyes full of understanding.

“Hey. she’s looking good. Well not good but...well...better than she could…” The knot in my throat was getting bigger, my eyes beginning to sting with the threat of tears.

“And I … I just thought maybe you’d want… to … um…” He trailed off, just giving me a long look as I tried to swallow down the mixture of feelings I couldn’t identify. Hector patted my shoulder then retreated back across the room.

-

The mirror had fogged up, droplets of condensation running down the smooth surface. I used the corner of my towel to wipe a patch away, grimacing a little at the squeaky noise the wet cloth produced. Carefully I applied some oil to my face, grabbed a razor and began to scrape the bumfluff-turned- beard from my face. The slow, steady, familiar action soothed me, giving me something to relax into as my mind wandered.

The shower had done wonders. My hair was now lighter and fluffy, as far as possible from the dank, limp mop I’d been developing for a while. The faint smell of citrus had replaced the lingering stench of sweat. My muscles felt more relaxed than ever and my mind was a little more at ease.

It was only when I’d fully shaved that I really looked at my face. Although from a distance I looked normal, around the edges I’d begun to fray. In a few months I’d gone from having a healthy, sun kissed glow to an almost pasty pallor, closer and nearer to a ghost than a human. The shadows under my eyes had darkened, smudges of charcoal stark under my eyes. My hair was now much longer than it'd been before, brushing my shoulders and beginning to curls at the ends while my fringe reached the tip of my nose. I made a mental note to cut it soon, before it got out of control.

I towelled my hair off quickly and pulled on a pair of cargo pants, my usual purple shirt and boots, leaving the labcoat folded over my arm. I wandered around the lab until I found the alcove again. My hands were shaking as I took a deep breath, steadying myself for whatever I was going to find.

I unlocked the tube, sliding the frosted glass away from the rest of the pod. The cold air instantly steamed in the warmth, making a small blanket of fog. I wafted it away rapidly. Nano looked so small in the tube and the flux looked so big. It’d spread from the side of her face to almost covering it, blocking one of her eyes completely. 

The taint had begun to crystallize in sharp lines up her arms and along her face in large blocky flat crystals, obscuring her delicate features. The edges however, were gooey and soft, slowly oozing down the side of her face and running into her hair. Nano’s other eye was weeping a thin trickle of purple down her face, dripping off her cheek and staining the bed of the cryotube.

The sight of it made me mad. I couldn’t stand to see the creeping tendrils of flux over her, slowly setting into her skin and tearing her away from me. I had to at least try to clean it off, even if it only lasted for an hour or two.

I grabbed an unlabeled bottle of water and a cloth, dampening it a little before gently wiping away the small tear of flux. I slowly worked my way across her face and down her arm, washing away the gloop and liberally covering the purple crystals with water. The flux seemed almost to melt off, the hardened lumps softening and disappearing into puddles of goo I just swiped off. It took a while, but eventually almost all the flux had been cleaned off, with just the palest hint of purple swirling under Nano’s pale skin. The cloth, however, was dark purple - almost black in the slight blue light emitted from the cryotube. 

It surprised me how easily I’d cleaned her off. Back in PandaLabs whenever we’d tried to wash the flux off, it’d just instantly come back, smudging and sliding everywhere and, if anything, spreading it faster. I took another look at the water. It seemed slightly more opaque, a little bluer than water.

I hooked my thaumometer from my pocket, quickly scanning the bottle. A vis solution? Hector had advanced further than I’d expected. I didn’t even know you could suspend aspects in solutions.

I dipped the corner of the cloth into the liquid, swirling it around a little. A little trail of white cloudy wisps later and the cloth was completely clean.

Holy shit. Had Hector solved it already?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this was a little late! For some reason I though February had 31 days? Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

It took a few seconds of shock for this to fully sink in before I was moving. I ran full pelt into the lab, clutching the bottle in a white-knuckled grip. “Hector?!”

“What is it Lal?” A worried head popped round a book shelf, panic spread across the plains of his face.”Are you ok? Is she ok? Has the flux spread any more?” A million-and-one questions suddenly jumped out at me.

“Hey, no!” I held my hands out comfortingly. “Nano’s fine! Don’t stress!” Hector visibly relaxed, slumping back against the bookshelf. 

“Thank god! What is it then?”

“Your vis solution worked!” My clone’s head snapped up, looking at me quizzically. His eyebrows had almost disappeared into his fringe.

“What vis solution?” His voice was on edge. The edges of his eyes tightened in suspicion.

“This one!” I shook the bottle at him. “The one you left at the side of the cryotube?“

“I didn’t make that”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah! I didn’t even know you could suspend aspects. How did you do it?” “

“I didn’t! It was just there.”

“How did it get there?” Hector began to look panicked. He ran his hands through his hair haphazardly as he asked more questions. “Why did it get there? What’s it done?!”

I grabbed his shoulder, trying to stop the panic spreading across his face. “It’s fine, don’t stress.”

“What do you mean it’s fine?!” Hector sank to one knee, pulling his hair a viscous look on his face. He looked like he was going to punch someone. I was suddenly terrified of him. “SOMEONE HAS BROKEN INTO OUR BASE AND IS TRYING TO HURT NANO! HOW IS THAT FINE?!”

I pinned him to the bookcase and grabbed his arms, clutching the labcoat like safety line. “DUDE!! SHE”S FINE!” I met Lalnable’s eye. “Calm down. Deep breaths. She’s fine.” Slowly his breathing slowed down and I let go of him. I stood back a step or two, to give him some room.

When he wrapped his arms around me, I just hugged him back. I could feel his shoulders shaking, could feel a damp patch spreading across my shoulder but I let it go, just rocking Hector back and forth. “She’s ok. In fact, better than ok.” I let the words of reassurance spill out. “Thats the thing, all the flux like, melted off of her. There’s still some in her, but its much less.” 

When he finally let go, I took his hand, pulling him along. “Come on!! You need to see this!” We walked slowly to the alcove, Hector wiping his eyes on the way, the florescent lights reflecting the tear tracks and making them stand out against his pale skin.

“Holy shit.” Hector ran up to Nano, stroking his hands over the glass of the cryo tube. “It’s all gone!”

Mere traces of purple swirled under her skin, slightly darker than it’d been when I left her, but still contained in her. It looked almost beautiful like that. Small thin swirls larcing delicately down the icy plains of her flesh, mapping out her cheekbones and arms, encircling her legs and ankles.

Hector’s eyes near glowed with excitement. “We need to experiment! We need to make this work! Maybe we can actually save her.” The tear tracks on his cheeks were drying on his face even as he looked forwards in hope. “For science?” We locked eyes, my determination reflected in those blood-red orbs. Lalnable grinned at me. 

“For science.”

\--

Lalna spoke directly to me as he twirled the bottle in his hands. “We’re going to have to be careful with this stuff, maybe try to synthesize it.”

“I can try and do that? We can centrifuge a little, see what it separats into.” A voice in my head popped up, red tinged words whispering into my brain. I spoke without thinking. “Oh, we’re going to have to make sure we don’t OD Nano on it. Too much of this and she’ll get vis poisoning.”

“What’s that?”

I relayed the information I was being supplied with. “You go white and chalky almost. Like, slowly disintegrate into nothing.” Another thought whizzed into in my head. “Oh, and your eyes go bright blue.”

Lalna looked at me sharply. “How do you know that?”

“Just popped up. It happens sometimes. Someone probably mentioned it to me...” I drifted off, turning away to avoid more questions. Fortunately, Lalna let it go.

We grabbed petridishes and agar jelly, setting up a breeding lab quickly. I grabbed some heat lamps, placing them in the corner of the lab while Lalna carefully swabbed the inside of a fluxed pig’s mouth. He transferred the cells to the jelly as I took a turn with the pig. We needed to made about 50 swabs then set them out to grow.

“I reckon within a few days we’ll have enough cultures. Then the interesting stuff can begin.” My clone rubbed his hands together in glee. “Maybe we’ll get this fixed this month!”

“Lalna?” Blood red text flashed across my vision.

“Um?” He hummed over at me quizzically.

“Did you know that biology is the only science in which multiplication is the same as division?”

His eyebrows furrowed as he thought for a second, then relaxed as a grin spread across his face. “You know, Hector, that was almost funny”

“Almost funny!” I glared at him indignantly. “You laughed!”

Lalna met my gaze over the rack of petri dishes. “Nope. I smiled”

“What was it missing?!” I threw my hands in the air in exaseration. “It was a good joke. What was wrong!?”

Lalna let me hang for a few seconds, building the tension just a little. “The delivery.”

Oh ho! That’d done it. Looks like we were going to have to do this the old fashioned way. “The Official Unabashed Scientific Dictionary defines asymmetry as a place where you bury dead people. “

“No, no no no no! Like this! What did one quantum physicist say when he wanted to fight another quantum physicist?” Lalna paused for precisely 2.6 seconds. “Let me atom.”

I smirked at that. “Um…” I hummed, clutching at straws when a thought popped up in my head. “Where does bad light end up?” A small pause. “In a prism.”

“Better.” Lalna smiled at me encouragingly. “What was the name of the first electricity detective?” Pause. “Sherlock Ohms” 

I grinned at him freely this time. It was nice, after so long alone to have someone to relax around. It was the first time we’d really spoken together about something other than Kim and the flux. It was almost… what was the word… friendly?

It was a dull and monotonous task, scraping cheek cells from the various animals I’d caught, yet we somehow managed to keep the jokes flowing. I was almost impressed by how many jokes the voices knew. It was enjoyable, but I couldn’t stop the niggling voice lodging itself in the back of my head, twisting into word round my laughter and deeper into my heart.

“When you fix Nano, how long is it until he leaves you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come join me on Tumblr?  
> http://everytimeidosomethingstupid.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi, give me prompts or just kick me up the arse to get something done!
> 
> Tumblr: http://everytimeidosomethingstupid.tumblr.com
> 
> Email: bwahahahabowser@gmail.com  
> 


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